


a musician distinguishes himself

by capricornia



Category: Panamindorah Series - Abigail Hilton, The Prophet of Panamindorah - Abigail Hilton
Genre: Angst, Can Shyshax Keep His Nose Out of Everyone's Business for Once?, Chance knows a lot about wolfing culture, Depression, Drinking, F/M, Interspecies Sex, Knotting (Mentioned), M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Music, Other, Violins, Wedding, i guess?, it's set in Sardor-de-lore so if you've read the books you know what I mean, mentions of slaughter, mentions of the smell of blood, post-epilogue, this is NOT a/b/o
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-27 03:16:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10800546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capricornia/pseuds/capricornia
Summary: i told the world i'd write the first panamindorah fic on ao3...





	a musician distinguishes himself

**Author's Note:**

> i told the world i'd write the first panamindorah fic on ao3...

“It must be difficult,” Sham says, partly affected by the wine, partly because Chance looks so miserable at Laylan and Fenrah’s wedding and will probably only be marginally happy if someone’s winding him up, “to watch all your brothers and closest friends select lifetime mates, knowing that you’ll never have the same kind of celebration.” He wishes immediately that he hadn’t said it.

Chance chokes a little on his bread and tries to recover by drinking a large gulp of wine. “You’d better watch it,” he says, “or you’ll get a second hoof-print in your chest to match the first.” There’s Chance’s morbid sense of humor again. “And besides,” he continues, the beginnings of a small smile flickering on his face, “ _you’re_ not married.”

Sham has never been bold in social situations; he likes his violins and his medicine and his quiet evenings. If he were braver, if he were more of a joking shelt, he might say _Would you like to shoot two birds with one arrow and remedy that?_ But he’s not, and he won’t, and the thought takes his breath away; he’s not ready. So instead he says something about how he never knew Chance cared that much. It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently. Chance turns his face away and drains his goblet.

“Do you really not know me at all after all these months?” Chance mumbles, too softly for a faun to hear, but Sham’s wolfling ears pick it up. Chance must have known he’d hear; Chance probably knows exactly to what pitch wolves and wolflings can hear. It’s not exactly a comforting thought.

It’s been a year and a half since the battle with the centaurs, a year and a half since the destruction in Port Ory and Danda-lay, a year and a half since Syrill was exiled to Filinia, a year and a half since Corellian the iteration disappeared. Corellian’s _here_ , though, and Sham sort of wants to talk to him and sort of wants to avoid him at the same time. Syrill’s here, too, with the Filinian delegation who have come to the wedding. It’s very much a political wedding - Meuril, Capricia, Istra and Jubal are here as well, along with Chance’s oldest brother, who is now the king, and someone who is apparently Dance’s pup and is the new king of the Durian wolves. Sham has also spotted Archemais here, somewhere, though he’s not sure if the wizard is staying for the entire thing.

In that year and a half, Chance, Sham, Fenrah, Laylan, Capricia and Shyshax have worked hard together to iron out the details of the new wolfling kingdom. They’ve all gotten to know each other a little better, but they haven’t exactly been the closest of buddies. They’ve had more disagreements than agreements, even between Fenrah and Laylan, who have only grown more in love.

The wedding's a far cry from the few smaller, more intimate marriages he remembers from his childhood - though, he realizes, he's never seen a wolfling ruler get married. He wishes it were more intimate. Maybe then Chance wouldn't be exchanging his princely misery for wine.

“I know you enough to know you’re miserable right now,” Sham points out to him.

Chance raises his eyebrow as if to say, _so are you_.

“Put down the wine and go eat something substantial, please. We’ve set up a faun table with no meat.” Sham doesn't think he's seen the cliff faun prince eat a single thing since the guests were invited into the hall. Chance doesn’t say anything. “As a healer, I’m ordering you to eat,” Sham says firmly. Chance nods this time, but still remains silent.

“Chance.”

Chance looks at him, then. Sham takes him in: rather gaunt, hair shorter than usual, the tiniest smudge of kohl under his bottom eyelashes, left over from the previous night doing Firebird-knows-what. In all honesty, he looks terrible, for all his fancy wedding clothes and purple cape. He’s standing at the table, shoulders up, posture tense. His ears are flat against his head, and his cheeks are somewhat flushed. Sham knows he knows most of the fauns in attendance, and some of the panauns and cats, too. Perhaps it’s losing his best friend to marriage that’s got him so down. Perhaps it’s the ruined city of Sardor-de-lore in which the wedding festivities are being held. Perhaps it’s simply his natural state - but Sham has seen him shaking and vomiting and losing blood; Sham has seen him needy and desperate for medical assistance and yet so resilient that after torture he still wouldn’t give away government secrets, and he still noticed things none of the rest of them did. Sham has seen him relaxed, drunk on thistle brandy and joking around with Shyshax. Sham has seen him sit for hours, playing the violin to stop Sham from killing himself.

He can smell the depression on Chance, hanging there around him like his own personal storm. The least Sham can do, he thinks, is return the favor.

“What is it?” Chance asks.

Sham decides against saying whatever half-formed thought is on his mind. “Come with me,” he says instead. Chance eyes him suspiciously but follows him out of the hall and down the stairs. “Be careful,” Sham warns when his paws push over part of the stair railing. “These stairs weren’t meant for hooves.” He can’t see Chance behind him, but he trusts the young prince will follow his lead.

“This is the palace, of course,” he begins, and gestures to the grand hallway below them. “I used to play on this stairwell - it’s a servants’ stair, and they’d always complain about me being underfoot. King Malic would hold informal meetings in this hall, and sometimes he’d look up and catch my eye.” Those were the only times Sham had ever seen his king look happy. He remembers wondering, when he was about five or six, what kind of childhood the wolfling king had led, if he’d been happy, if he’d played on those same stairs.

They walk down the rest of the stairs and through the hallway, then past rooms with paintings gauged by cats, past stones with sword-marks on them, past carpets matted in rust.

“I’m glad it’s her,” Chance says suddenly. “If it was to be anyone, I’m glad it’s her. She needs his help. He needs to feel needed.”

Sham nods. “Pack instinct.”

“Yes.”

Sham leads him down more stairs, through bedrooms and kitchens and underground bath rooms. He’s going mostly by muscle memory, and there are several times where he has to pause and cast about.

“This is a state secret,” Sham says as he leans against the wall in what was once a nursery. The beds are torn, and it’s so far underground that nobody has gotten to clean up the bones yet. Sham shivers. He’s not sure if the blood he’s smelling is imaginary or if it’s still there on the bedposts.

“I am not a wolfling, Sham,” Chance reminds him, as if Sham doesn’t know that, as if Chance is the one who is having a wolfling identity crisis and not his former-bounty-hunter counterpart storeys above them.

Sham laughs. “No,” he says. “And you’re not the only one with secret tunnels.”

Chance looks confused. “I thought you said something about a sewage grate--”

Sham shushes him and pushes against the secret door in the wall. It opens with a horrible grinding noise. Sham sniffs the air. He can smell the stale air in the passage, bringing news of wood and metal and death. The room beyond the passage is large and dark, but Sham knows his way around it like it's the back of his hand. He sniffs, casting about for the lamp hanging from the wall.

"There should be enough here, unless the cats destroyed it...." He finds the switch and turns it a couple of times until a light burns in the lamp. Chance looks startled in the new light.

"When the cats sacked Sardor-de-lore, they didn't just kill wolflings," Sham explains, "they killed our culture and knowledge, too. You were born afterward, and Capricia was too young to remember. We had many inventions. It wasn't until we stayed in the house of some, ahem... cliff faun that we realized you don't have these. It's made from natural gas we imported from the Wefrivain archipelago and the Lawless Lands."

“I never expected to see these in person,” Chance whispers. “I read about them. I even, um… tried to get some alchemists to try and recreate this phenomenon. It didn’t work very well.” Chance stares at the gas light as if it holds all the secrets to the universe. "That's... what you wanted to show me?"

Sham laughs, even though it isn't funny. "No. What I wanted to show you is what's in the next room." The next room is completely dry. There are sealed containers of oil on the shelves that line the wall next to the door. They're so deep and so far under the palace now that the cats never got down here. Sham lights the gas lamp on the ceiling, and he hears Chance gasp.

On the wall opposite them, and on the two walls on either side, are musical instruments. There are many stringed ones, but some winds are there as well. Sham gazes at them for a while, remembering his father taking him down here for the first time when he was three, letting him touch the flutes on the very bottom shelf.

Sham risks a look at Chance. The youngest cliff faun prince looks like he might cry. Sham wonders if anyone has ever cared to show him something beautiful like this, something they thought he might like.

"I used to come down here a lot, when I was a child," Sham says. It's not what he wants to say, but Chance understands anyway.

"Thank you," he says, "for showing me this."

Through the tunnel and up the stairs, Laylan and Fenrah's wedding is going on. The meal is almost winding down. Soon it will be time for the traditional performance from the two joining families. Sham is, of course, the only family Fenrah has left - besides Laylan, of course, her third cousin. And because Fenrah is Laylan's only wolfling family, and she's the one marrying him, Chance has agreed to step in and play the traditional roles. Sham wonders who explained the traditions to him, or if he already knew.

"I figured we could take an instrument from here, for our wedding piece," Sham says.

"They're probably not in tune," says Chance, and Sham can tell by the tremor in his voice and the smell of sweat and tears that he's saying, _I could never. Not after what I did._ He wishes he could stop Chance from feeling so damned guilty all the time, but he knows he’ll only be able to do that once he fully forgives Chance. From time to time, he thinks he’s ready to, but then he sees some pack decimated by the faun bounties. He knows it’s not all Chance’s fault, but it’s difficult to forgive the person who actively hunted one’s pack for so many moons.

"We can tune them," Sham says gently. "We can do it right here. Come on, Chance. Pick an instrument."

Chance, of course, picks the one that had once belonged to Malic's great-grandfather - and he hands it to Sham.

"You ought to have this one," he says. "Why do you not?"

"You know what it is?"

Chance shrugs. "I've seen diagrams. There are several wolfling history books in the library at Danda-lay."

"I haven't come down here since I was seven," Sham says. "With my father. I wasn't sure if it was still here."

"So you came down to get a piece of your old life back, because you feel like you're losing Fenrah." Now it's Chance's turn to be uncomfortably apt. Sham shifts onto his bad paw, flexes his claws against his boot, feels the phantom pressure of a sword puncturing his skin. "Well, aren't we just the prettiest picture?" Chance continues, somewhat bitterly. "Two former enemies, jealous that they're losing the only true friends they've ever had."

"I might call Laylan a bit more than a _friend_ ," says Sham, wondering if he's crossing a line.

Chance sighs and stares resolutely at the ancient violin in his hands. "Then you would be wrong. He keeps to himself. Always afraid of getting on the wrong side of public opinion, of getting murdered in the middle of the night. Not that he couldn't fend off any attackers." Chance sounds proud, but his ears are drooping. "I never could get him to come out of his shell with me."

Sham wonders if he knows how worried Laylan was about him after Daren had beaten him half to death. "Well, thank the Firebird you're not like that," he says, and Chance actually laughs. "You can take that violin," Sham says, pointing to one just above faun-height on their right. "My father made it."

Chance picks it up reverently, strokes the wood, the strings, the bow. "It's excellently made," he says.

Sham sniffs. "Of course it is." But he's smiling despite himself at the way Chance is inspecting it. "Let's go entertain some politicians."

Sham leads the way back to the wedding hall with the clack of Chance's hooves beating the stone behind him and reverberating around in his brain.

They play pieces of music so ancient it hurts Sham’s heart, though he’s not sure if that’s from the wine, the emotion behind what they’re doing, or the fact that Chance knows and can complement the traditional wolfling wedding music. Sham thinks if Chance had been magically turned into a wolfling somehow in the middle of the night, he would have saved all of wolfling culture. As he plays, he thinks about the unfairness of it all: Chance being able to research wolflings because of all the resources available to him, as a faun and as a prince, while Sham and Fenrah had to go on what they heard from the ruined packs and their own spotty childhood memories - and he pours all that emotion into his music. Laylan and Fenrah disappear, the wedding guests disappear, the cats, Chance, Sham himself, until there’s only the music of the two violins, dancing together, winding around each other, breaking apart and coming together, singing traditionally, innovating wildly. Sham changes the key, Chance harmonizes, and together they complicate the notes so much that it makes Sham tear up. He feels like his whole body is coming apart, like his muscles are separating from each other, like his own depression is leaking out of his head with his tears.

When they’re done, everyone is silent. Sham opens his eyes. Fenrah has her eyes closed, as is the custom. Laylan is looking at Fenrah, as is... not quite the custom, but who is Sham to judge? He just improvised on the traditional wedding duet with a _cliff faun_.

Lexis is grinning so wide all his teeth are showing. Sham feels his ears instinctively flick back. Talis is standing behind Fenrah, and she looks like she’s crying. Danzel leads everyone in applause. Fenrah leads Laylan up the steps to the dais to take their places next to their family representatives. Sham hugs her. He sees Chance thump Laylan on the back.

“You looked like you were coming back from the dead,” says someone with a purr, and Sham turns to see Shyshax. The cheetah dips his head. “Well done on your duet. That was impressive. I even managed not to twitch my tail!”

“What an incredible accomplishment,” says Chance from behind Sham. He scowls at Shyshax. “Don’t you have something to do? Grooming Laylan’s hair or something? Shoo.”

“See if you can work on his attitude,” Shyshax tells Sham. “Maybe you’ll even get it in the range of his violin-playing. Who knows? Miracles can happen.” He stalks away with a single twitch of his tail, to go and pester Ounce.

Chance shakes his head. “That cheetah manages to get on my nerves every damn time.”

Sham smiles. “Like you’re such a Monument,” he teases.

“I can be monumental,” Chance returns. “I’ll be the most monumental member of the House of Windar Panamindorah has ever seen.”

“You can’t be king, though,” Sham says softly. Even if all Chance’s brothers die or abdicate, a prince with a man as a mate will never legally be allowed to rule. Sham thinks it’s a stupid law, but Chance can’t challenge it.

Chance sighs. “Maybe I don’t want to be king,” he says. “I mean, I’d like to make some difference in the world - a good difference.” He kicks at the wall behind the dais, then looks guilty. Sham wants to marry him. The thought is sudden, gone as swiftly as it came in, pushed out by Sham’s sense of self-preservation.

They go back to the table, eat a while, Sham not eating meat out of respect for Chance’s sensitivities. The windows are dark now, and red moon is visible in the sky. Wolfling weddings traditionally last all night, with several hours of dancing and eating. It feels good to eat, good to dance, but the Raider in Sham still feels restless, still feels like he’s doing something wrong by being in a room with cats and fauns. There are felidae there, too, and Sham supposes they were worse off than he ever was, though he feels bad comparing their respective situations.

When the meal part is over, they dance for a couple of hours. Laylan and Fenrah sit down and eat while an orchestra of woflings and fauns play music, and everyone else dances. The cats make circles and do their traditional dances, which is a somewhat strange sight, and the wolflings dance in fluid motions, while the fauns perform their hoof-clicking numbers. The felidae dance in wide circles, not having any remembrance of their own tradition. In the second half-watch, Laylan and Fenrah dance alone, then are joined by the guests in the last quarter-watch of the first half of the night. Laylan dances with Shyshax and Chance, Fenrah dances with Sham. Talis and Danzel dance the whole time together. Sham spots Syrill and Lexis moving to the music, Syrill’s ears flicking back, Lexis purring slightly. Capricia dances with her father, with Lexis, with Syrill. Archemais materializes and dances with a felidae woman Sham has never seen before, then with Corry, then with both of them together. Shyshax nudges Chance over to Sham, and they start dancing, too. Sham has honestly never been much for dancing, and his dance with Chance is nothing like their violin playing: it’s not aggressive, it’s not a give-and-take. It’s more of a _figure this out as we go along, oh, shit, I stepped on your paw_ , but Sham tries his hardest. He can tell Chance is fighting back a smile at his non-skills.

“Shut up,” he mutters, and Chance laughs.

“Your ears are twitching madly,” says Chance.

“I know.”

“Relax. It’s not a competition. I’m not going to stab you.”

“I know.”

“What is it, then?” Chance looks genuinely concerned, as if he wants Sham to know that his intentions are good.

“I just really hate dancing.”

Chance blinks.

“I’m a music person. I don’t dance; I don’t do social situations. Makes me nervous.” Sham's tail is twitching, and his claws are all the way out in his boots.

“Then let’s stop,” Chance says. He leads Sham over to the faun table, pours them each some juice.

“There you two lovebirds are,” Shyshax says behind them, and Chance rolls his eyes and curses under his breath.

“Will you never go away?” he asks, but then he notices Lexis is behind Shyshax. They both incline their heads.

“Please give my congratulations to Laylan and Fenrah,” says Lexis. “Pardon me, but I must go find my daughter. I believe she headed somewhere in the palace with the iteration Corellian.” Sham nods. He notices that Lexis leaves to go find Leesha with Syrill right behind him. He turns back to Chance, who is frowning at Syrill’s back.

“That faun is the most sexual person I have ever met,” he says. “I’m pretty sure he’s been in bed with Jubal. And now Lexis.”

“There seem to be a lot of inter-species relationships going on here,” murmurs Sham. He can feel Chance looking at him, at his face, at his shoulders, at his mouth. He flicks his ears.

Chance leans over him to grab a pastry from the table. His mouth is close to Sham’s ear; his lips brush the outer rim of it. “You want to leave for a while?” he says in a low voice, and Sham wills himself not to shiver.

They get out of the room, out of the palace, out into the maze of desolated city. Chance kisses him under an arch. Sham pushes him up against the side of the arch, Chance’s curls tickling his neck, then his lips. The arch crumbles, and they just barely manage to get out of the way. Chance laughs, breathlessly. It’s a sound Sham has never heard.

“You know I have different biology than you,” Sham tells him abruptly, and Chance nods. Of course Chance nods. Sham thinks he probably has a whole collection of baculum bones in his bedside drawer or something.

But Chance whispers, “I’ve only read about it,” and Sham kisses him fiercely, just because he can.

They have sex on some long-gone noble’s bed, and Sham’s memories of it are filled with Chance’s hand around his knot, the smell of both of them, the smells of old blood and dust and wine, the smells of sweat and tears and old cat waste. It’s not his most pleasant memory, but it feels like he should build a Monument in this spot, like he could call down the Firebird and rival him with his heat.

Chance touches his temple when they’re done, lying on top of the torn sheets. “Whose house are we in?” he asks. Sham doesn’t know. He stares at the ceiling for a time, wondering how many eighth-watches have gone by, wondering if Laylan and Fenrah are asking where they are. After a while, he notices that Chance is crying silently beside him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. Chance shakes his head. Sham pulls him close into a hug. He remembers the first time he did this, when they both thought Chance was going to die.

“Firebird, but you’re protective,” Chance whispers, and now he’s truly let his guard down. He’s crying on Sham’s fancy wedding shirt. Sham is glad they managed to get their trousers off all the way, but he knows they’ll have a lot of cleaning up to do. Fauns may not smell the sex on them, but all the panauns and cats and wolves in there surely will. There’s no way nobody’s going to find out what they’ve done. Unless, of course, they don’t go back to the wedding. Them being the family representatives and all, that’s quite a challenge, and it will also cause a minor scandal. Sham knows the tiny, new wolfling kingdom can’t afford a scandal, however minor, and he knows he can’t stand up his best friend and her husband like that.

Firebird, but a little rebellious portion of his mind tells him he wants to.

“Forgive me?” Chance asks in the smallest voice Sham has ever heard. He wonders how many people have been privy to that voice. Laylan, probably. Probably not Chance’s mother or father. Definitely not Jubal. Sham suddenly feels the weight of their history lying on top of them.

“We’re going to mess everything up,” he says instead of answering.

“Give me this,” Chance says fiercely, sitting up. “Give me this one time, and, I swear, I’ll never mention it again.”

But Sham shakes his head. “Won’t you?” he says. He smiles. “Won’t Shyshax?”

Chance scowls. “Shyshax be damned.”

Sham thinks about it for a while, then gets up and goes into the bathroom. He’s glad to be back in Sardor-de-lore, with water running through pipes and gas lamps and that music room. He washes himself up, uses some old perfume he finds in there, brings some out to Chance.

“You’d better get cleaned up,” he says, “before every panaun and cat and wolf in a league’s distance recognizes you as mine.” Chance blushes a little, smiles a little. He cleans himself up.

“You don’t need protection,” Sham says to him later, back at the wedding reception. Nobody’s looked at them any differently except Lexis and Laylan. Sham thinks they know. He doesn’t particularly care. “You’ve already made a huge difference. A good difference.” He gestures around him. “ _You_ made this happen,” he says. “Thank you.”

Chance inclines his head. “Come play with me sometime,” he says, and he says it like it could be mundane, friendly talk about violins, or it could be an invitation. Sham rather thinks it’s both. He nods. Chance hesitates, then hugs him. “Thank _you_ ,” he whispers. Sham wants him to say it again. Sham wishes he were as young as Chance, as privileged, as bold, as bitterly rebellious.

“I’m getting old, Chance,” he says, instead of whatever it is his brain’s urging him to say. “My bones ache.”

“Any bones in particular?” Chance asks, like he’s asking the weather. Sham smacks him lightly, slightly awed even now that he can touch Chance like this, that he can playfully slap the cliff faun prince upside the head. How the tables have turned in the past two years.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go dance with the newlyweds.”

And they do, until the sun comes up in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry abbie


End file.
